That London

Yesterday I travelled down to 'that London' to attend a black tie awards presentation with work.  Hard to believe but I have never been to London before although, to be honest, it's not something that has ever appealed to me.  I'm not really overly interested in big cities and much prefer the countryside but thought it was about time I saw what all the fuss was about.

We went down on the train to Euston and then got the tube over to Aldgate East.  After dropping our bags off at our rooms, we realised we were right by Whitechapel and I got all excited because I'm quite interested in Jack the Ripper.  Disappointingly, it didn't turn out to be very exciting at all but it was nice to have a walk after sitting on trains for the past few hours.

As most of you will probably already know from Facebook, I was not at all impressed with my room.  £139 for this mess...

Nice bit of concrete floor under the desk.

 Gorgeous isn't it?

As Josie pointed out, towel rail over the loo?

Uniform cracks in bath panel, lovely!

This is the door to my room... in the stairwell!  It was so noisy I had to sleep with earplugs.

Why is it that just because it's London they think they can rip you off?  When I've been on nights out in Manchester I have got MUCH better rooms than this (you can't get much worse) for as little as £25!!!!  So glad I didn't have to pay for this room myself.


The awards dinner itself was a good do and there was lots of free alcohol which I took advantage of.  It wasn't a late night for me and Bernie, who I travelled with from Manchester, and we were back at the hotel for 11pm ish.  The others stayed out apparently until 4am!

As usual when I drink, I fell asleep really easily but I woke up really at about 5.30am.  I was also woken up a couple of hours before that with a painful cramp in my calf which still hurt when I got out of bed this morning.  Why does it hurt so much more when it happens in your sleep?

At about 7.30 I headed down for breakfast, where I was informed that my room rate only included the continental breakfast and not the full English.  I definitely got my monies worth though and really loaded my plate and also went back for seconds.  I had four crusty bread rolls with loads of different types of ham, salami and three different cheeses, two croissants, a cinnamon whirl and two pain au chocolats.

Bernie and I then went for a little wander before heading back to Euston for our train.  We wandered along to Tower Bridge and took some photos of the Tower of London, still with a lot of the poppies...

How ugly does this modern building look amongst all the old buildings: 

So that's about it really as we had to head off to get our train home.  Obviously I barely saw anything but I don't think I'll be rushing back.  I'm just not a city girl and would much prefer to spend any free time I have in the quiet countryside rather than surrounded by people.  I'm glad I went though and I did have a good time.


Once I got home I took Ruby out for a short run to try to burn off some of that breakfast.  We ran along to the top barn then up to the Pigeon Tower via the steeper route and then ran along George's Lane and down the Pike Race farm field onto the concrete road.  I very rarely run down that field because it's usually full of sheep but there were none in it today so I thought we'd have a change.  From the concrete road we ran through to Tiger's Clough and down the Devil's Steps then ran up to the stables and down past Wylderswoode Stud back home.

Total distance - 4.3 miles

http://www.strava.com/activities/220944011/overview